Dear mom

A mother enters her daughter's bedroom and sees a letter over the bed. With the worst premonition, she reads it, with trembling hands.

Dear mom,
It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm telling you that I have eloped with my new boyfriend. I found real passion and he is so nice, even with all his piercings and tattoos, and I love riding on the back of his big motorcycle. But it's not only that mom, I'm pregnant and Dillon said that we will be very happy in his trailer in the woods. He wants to have many more children with me and that's one of my dreams. I've learned that marijuana doesn't hurt anyone and we'll be growing it for us and his friends, who are providing us with all the cocaine and ecstasy we may want. In the meantime, we'll pray for science to find the AIDS cure, for Dillon to get better, he deserves it.
Don't worry mom, I'm 15 years old now and I know how to take care of myself. Someday I'll visit so you can get to know your grandchildren.


Your daughter,
Katie




PS. Mom, it's not true. I'm next door at Wilma's. I just wanted to show you that there are worse things in life than my results sheet that's in my desk drawer... I love you!

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Something about "Paid Surveys"

Paid Surveys have been one of the most popular and proven ways to earn some extra cash. Many people around the world are involved in these programs and I too have been using them for quite a while now.

I'm sure you have heard of such programs and probably some of you might already be involved in those programs. For those of you who have not yet come across the term Paid Surveys, I'll give you a brief introduction of the system and how it works.


Multinational businesses are very much concerned about their target market and customer satisfaction. They need to know what their clientele expects from them and at the same time, fulfill their demands and satisfy them. Every year these global marketing giants spend millions of dollars to find out what their customers really need and how to cater those demands. Knowing these is highly important to them when it comes to embarking on new business ventures and improving the quality of their own products.

In order to find out what their customers think about them, they carry out surveys and other means of gathering information. Surveys are not something new to the world and I hope you have at least taken part in some of them in your life. So likewise, online surveys are also similar to them and as with any other normal survey, all you have to do is take part in them and give your true opinion.

These companies are looking for people like you and me to participate in their surveys. They are looking for public opinion and yes, they are willing to spend millions of dollars for that!


You might think why they are so bounty... well, that's where it gets great! These businesses need your opinion about their products and that enables them to make changes, improvements, alterations and in some cases, get rid of their not so popular products. So in order to get these valuable information, they require us to provide them with our genuine idea about them. Remember, here, we represent their customers and customers are their best asset when it comes to a business establishment. So the bottom line is we provide them with accurate and reliable information on the topic they want to know and they give us a small reward for giving them that little bit of information. Think of it as a win-win situation where both parties are satisfied after the deal.


Now that you have some idea about what these paid surveys are, I'll give you some explanations about how they operate. There are hundreds of market research companies out there and they are the ones who conduct those surveys on behalf of a client (let's say like, Nike, Coca Cola for instance). These marketing research companies have an online representation which allows them to carry out internet-based surveys. i.e they have their own website. So you have to go and register in their websites in order to participate in their surveys. But there are some catches about this too. For example, you might have to pay an initial membership fee and you also have to provide them with your personal information too. Giving them your personal information allows them to pick the most ideal set of participants for a particular survey (So there is a good reason behind it).

There is a great deal of tips I need to share with you in this matter but I don't feel like including them all in this post because then this would be a very long article. So for now, I'm ending this short introduction on paid surveys but I'll be revealing other useful information about them in future. So keep coming back...

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Adding Subtitles to a Movie

Have you ever wanted to watch a movie with subtitles on?

Sometimes, the pronunciation is a little too ambiguous and hard to follow. So in such cases, it's better to have subtitles... Don't you think so?

well, adding subtitles to a movie is so easy and it only takes 5 minutes(at most)!

Here I will explain you how to accomplish it.

But first you need to have a specific software installed for subtitles to work. I suggest you install K-Lite Codec Pack. It's one of the best codec packs available and it works with almost all kinds of media formats. You can download it from this site

After you download it, install the default configuration(this only takes 5 minutes) and you are free to use it for your media files.

Now let's get to the subject :)

Here's what you have to do:
1. Download the subtitle file from the Internet
2. Integrate it with the movie file

Before we get in to the actual process, let me explain what is a "Subtitle file". Subtitle files are files with .SUB/.IDX,.SRT, .SUP, and .SSA. There is also .SMI, .TXT, and about 20 others.
You can download them from a suitable website. I'll list some of the popular sites below

Subscene (what I use)
OpenSubtitles
DivX Subtitles
Any Subs
RDW Subtitles
Subbiee Search

You can download your subtitle file from any of the above sites. Subtitle files are usually 40 to 80kB (when zipped) and therefore downloading takes only seconds!

Ok let's get back to the process ;)

For the purpose of this tutorial, let's say you want to add subtitles to the movie "Twilight" (assuming that your Twilight copy doesn't have any subtitles) ;)

Once you download the zipped file(most of the time, the files are zipped to increase the download speed), extract it and get the file which has a .srt (or any of the above extensions) extension and place it inside the same folder(see the screenshot below)

click on the image to see in actual size

Then rename the subtitle file with the same name as the movie file(this is the most important step). For example, if your movie file's name is Twilight.avi then the subtitle file's name should be Twilight.srt (depending on the type of file that you downloaded).

And there you are! Now you have successfully applied the subtitle file to your movie. :)

Now I'll summarize the steps we have done so far (skipping the codec installation part)
1. Downloading the relevent subtitle file.
2. Unzipping it and obtain the .srt file.
3. Placing it inside the same folder that contains the movie file.
4. Renaming the subtitle file with the same name as the movie file.

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